From This Eternal Violence
by Shade Embry
Summary: After the call from Chappelle, Mason makes a gamble and won't risk CTU's tech expert to its effects. But will she turn her back on CTU and him to save her own life?
1. In The End

TITLE: From This Eternal Violence  
  
AUTHOR: Brittany "Thespis" Frederick  
  
E-MAIL: baltimorelt@yahoo.com  
  
RATING: PG for language  
  
SPOILERS: 7:00-8:00 PM  
  
CATEGORY: Drama, Missing Scene  
  
SUMMARY: A musing on what that phone call between Mason and Chappelle was. When Mason gets the order from Chappelle, he makes a gamble and won't sacrifice Liz to its unholy risks.  
  
ORIGINAL CHARACTER BIO: Liz Rycoff is CTU's Chief of Technology. She is close friends with Jack and with George Mason, and has a political alliance with Mason, who wants her to go to work for him at District, but Liz's loyalty to Jack holds her back.  
  
RECOMMENDED LISTENING: "Hold The Dream" by Firehouse  
  
  
  
She stormed into CTU like a whirlwind, grey eyes aflame like twin bursts of starfire, manner tense and intense, stopping only to throw her metal briefcase to Milo before she mounted the stairs to Jack's office, knuckles white as they gripped the railing deliberately. Everyone who watched her go knew Liz was trouble.  
  
She opened the door to Jack's office, then slammed it shut, sending a shivering pulse through the building. Mason looked up quickly at the horrendous sound, then stopped what he was doing as she stalked over to the desk, getting right in his face, so close he could feel her breathe.  
  
"You had me forced out," she said lowly.  
  
"Stand down, Liz," he warned her, but she'd have none of it.  
  
"You had me sent down to the hotel when you knew Secret Service didn't need my help. Why?" she said.  
  
"Do you really want to know?"  
  
Liz gripped the paperweight on Jack's desk, hefted it, and threw it across the room, sending it bouncing off his locker and leaving a dent in the metal door. Though she would apologize to Jack later, she made no apologies to Mason now. "Don't toy with me, George. What are you doing to me?"  
  
"I'm trying to save your job and possibly your life," he said, now standing, meeting her fiery gaze and holding it. "Do you know who called four minutes before I had you dispatched?"  
  
"No, I don't, but you're going to tell me."  
  
"Chappelle at District. He wants this ended now. I asked him for backup for Jack, and he wouldn't give it."  
  
"You're not serious. Chappelle knows Jack, they have a history, why would he…" Her face switched from furious anger to surprised, even shocked disbelief, and Mason's tone softened accordingly. "I think we have to consider that he could be the mole in CTU, and if he comes down here, I don't want you in the line of fire."  
  
"He's your *boss,* George."  
  
"I know that, but you also know I've never trusted him. He's setting a lot of people up to *die,* Liz, and I don't want one of them to be you. Do you understand me now?"  
  
"I still could have held my own," she said quietly.  
  
He gripped her by the shoulders. "He could be here any minute and I can't tell you what he might do. Even I can't take him without taking a big hit. I'm sorry to say this, Liz, but you can't stand in the way of this barrage. None of us can. And I'd rather get you the hell out of here while I can save someone."  
  
She stared at Mason blankly, unable to summon her voice that had moments ago been a force of thunder in the small room.  
  
"Get out of here, Liz. Go home, go somewhere, get the hell out while you still can. I'll call you if and when I can." Mason turned away from her then, with an almost shaken sadness in his eyes. "Believe me when I say this," he whispered to her as she crossed toward the door, "despite everything, I never wanted it to end like this."  
  
And she believed him.  
  
-One Hour Earlier-  
  
Liz grabbed her jacket, threw it on and crossed the floor of CTU, fingering the keys to her car. The order had come down just minutes ago: check with Secret Service – now that Palmer's made his announcement, he may need more security, and you can provide the hardware. She told Milo she was clocking out, then walked out trying to formulate a plan.  
  
Up in Jack's office, Mason watched her go through the clear wall, looking down on her with complex emotions he could not decipher. He watched until she had gone, then looked at the phone on the desk. Chappelle had not minced words. And though Mason could stand up to Chappelle, had done so before, and was practically waiting for the time when he could permanently overtake him, this time struck him as not a good time to take chances with people's lives.  
  
He turned away from the wall, went back to the desk and picked up the phone again, its weight heavy in his hand. As he punched an extension button, he could only hope that he had done the right thing.  
  
As he asked to be connected to the right number, he typed quickly on the keyboard, and with a few keystrokes was staring Liz's dossier in the face. Her unremarkable career from Electronic Crimes Branch to CTU, and if he was lucky, maybe somewhere else. Somewhere safe, like Division, where he could keep her safe from harm. But she'd never go without Jack, and Mason didn't know if he could protect Jack.  
  
He'd warned them before that his power was running out. He wondered if it was gone now.  
  
Quickly, he entered an addition to her file that said she had been seconded to the Secret Service, and hoped it was enough to put her in the clear. It was all he really could do. Liz would have to choose between her own safety and her friends, and if she didn't seize what little time he could give her, the fall would surely kill her.  
  
He couldn't watch her die. He couldn't watch any of them die. Mason put his head in his hands as the phone rang once, twice, and took a deep breath. How could someone sacrifice human lives for an agenda? How could it be that cruel?  
  
He cursed Chappelle even as he felt a piercing pain in his heart.  
  
-Present Time-  
  
Liz crossed back to her desk, popped the metal briefcase that Milo had smartly deposited on it, and began emptying all her essential belongings into its spare room. The Palm Pilot, data files, everything she could reasonably take. The gun went into a back pocket. Whatever was left behind was left to chance, and she'd been taught that chance favored only the prepared mind. Whatever she left would be compromised within the hour.  
  
"Is everything okay, Liz?" Milo asked over her shoulder. "You looked pretty pissed."  
  
"It's fine," she said quietly. "Uh, listen, they're sending me back out and I don't know how long I'll be gone. You're in charge. Mason has my cell number if you really need it." She picked up the briefcase, hefted it, and looked at him firmly. "Everything's fine, Milo."  
  
Then she started to walk away. Nina was looking at her ever briefly, Tony's eyes were on her spine. Checking her watch, she nodded what she considered to be final gestures to them both, and then kept going before she was crazy enough to turn back. The only person that could make her stay was Jack, and she hadn't heard from him in over an hour, since before she left.  
  
Second to Jack in her hierarchy of loyalty was Mason. So in the absence of Jack, if Mason said go, she went. But she wouldn't, no matter what anyone said, call it goodbye.  
  
She got back into her Sunfire and drove. Where would she go if CTU folded? Mason had asked her several times, even at their first meeting, expecting that a higher-up slot as Chief of Technology for Division or District would be her choice. He kept that space open for her, she knew. He wanted her by his side. She was impressed with such loyalty from such a man, but she knew what it would demand of her.  
  
She would have to cross the line between agent and bureaucrat. And in times like these, she wondered if she hadn't already. Unfortunately, it now felt like that decision was out of her hands.  
  
When Jack's cell phone still didn't give her an answer, she dialed the head of Palmer's Secret Service detail, told him she was returning. At the stoplight, she rested her head on the steering wheel and told herself it was not as bad as she thought it was.  
  
She knew she was lying to herself. 


	2. Futile Examinations

From This Eternal Violence  
  
Segment Two  
  
-One Hour Earlier-  
  
Mason couldn't believe what he was hearing. He wanted to reach through the phone, grab Chappelle by the throat and crush his windpipe. The ignorant, arrogant little twit really thought he knew better. Well, when he could say he'd gotten out from behind his desk and taken bullets and spent some time in the field, then he was entitled to an opinion. This moment he was just being blind and stupid, and stupidity got people killed.  
  
Minutes? He wanted him to end this in minutes? Did he think it was a board game to be packed up and put away, a simulation to be concluded, reprogrammed, and restarted? He'd only been to CTU briefly, whereas Mason had been around generally since midnight. Richard Walsh was dead, and he was a better man than most. Did that not register? Obviously not.  
  
But his chances were slim. If he disobeyed Chappelle, he'd have to have backup to stand his ground. Chappelle would pull him and get someone else. And that someone else would screw everything up. If he wanted to give any hope to CTU he had to be in control. And with the bad blood that remained, no one, not Nina, not Tony, no one would back him up if he challenged Chappelle.  
  
Capitulate. How injust. How weak. And how imminent.  
  
He hung up the phone again. Chappelle would not be dissuaded. And now he was making Mason the object of his destruction. At this rate it would be Mason who would be crucified at the end of the day.  
  
If there was an end to see.  
  
-Present Time-  
  
Mason considered trying to call Chappelle one last time, trying to get him to back down on his ultimatum. Maybe the third call would do it. He didn't care for Jack Bauer, but Bauer was still an agent, a human being. It still mattered. But he knew Chappelle in his blindness wouldn't listen.  
  
He put the assault order through.  
  
And then he prayed, prayed for Liz, for Jack, for Teri and Kim, and for CTU and the Agency and the state of California and the world. How was it that good men died today and no one noticed?  
  
Nina glanced up at him, stunned.  
  
He wanted to say how much he felt her shock, how much it hit him too. But she would never believe him. The only person who might believe a word he said was gone, and if she was smart about her hand, she'd not be back.  
  
"Good luck, Elisabeth," he said quietly. "You don't deserve this."  
  
None of them did.  
  
-Present Time, Palmer's Hotel-  
  
Liz shook hands again with the chief of Palmer's detail as she met with them for the second time in just over an hour. He briefed her on what had happened in the short time, offered her champagne left over from the Senator's celebration party, which some of the agents had been having a glass of. She turned it down. She wasn't thinking straight without inebriation.  
  
"Agent Rycoff?" the chief said.  
  
"What?" She glanced up at him.  
  
"Are you all right, ma'am?" he asked, sounding worried.  
  
She shook her head, as if that would clear the pain. "It's nothing I can't work through," she lied, popping the seal on her laptop. "Nothing that can be helped, anyway."  
  
"You're sure?"  
  
"Yes. But thank you for your concern."  
  
The agent wasn't buying it, but he wouldn't push her over the issue. Liz was grateful for that. She didn't have the voice to fight, the strength to push someone's viewpoint. Instead, she typed with unsteady hands, and with each line of code she wrote, she felt another needle in her spine.  
  
Mason warned her off.  
  
Had he warned the others?  
  
Probably not. They wouldn't listen if he did.  
  
So Mason warned her off, knowing she would listen.  
  
She had listened. She had left.  
  
She had left, and then the probable mole – Chappelle – would show up. Or give orders. And change the future. And the sky would fall.  
  
A top officer leaves right before trouble starts.  
  
More suspicion falling right on her shoulders. If she didn't have the reputation she'd worked so hard to earn, she may have very well been a candidate to be the mole. As it stood, she felt not too far removed from that.  
  
And Jack was still gone. Still out there.  
  
She tried his phone again as she typed. No answer.  
  
Jack was gone. She had deserted. Only Nina remained. The officers of CTU were vanishing one by one, and those that stood were fighting through obvious disarray. What would happen next?  
  
Would she ever be there to know? For all she knew, Chappelle had come down, seized control of CTU, disavowed Jack and ordered a massive assault or some other plan doomed to fail.  
  
She stared at her cell phone. Maybe Mason would call, deny all her fears.  
  
Or maybe the phone would never ring and it would all go down without her and she would never know until it was too late.  
  
The phone stayed silent as she went back to work.  
  
-To Be Continued- 


End file.
